Thursday, July 10, 2014

Cubism (pt. 6)

A late Expressionist, Marc Chagall
practiced Cubism in his earlier works but then moved onto personal
Expressionism that also took from Surrealism (which is an art movement we will
look at in greater detail later). Many
of his works showcased couples, but this one, La Mariée, is particularly among
his most famous paintings.

There are certainly surreal
elements within the work, but Chagall operates from Expressionist approaches to
subject matter. In fact, the artist
frequently used images from Jewish and Russian folktales as well as children's
stories to convey aspects of cultural identity, energy, and passion. In this painting we are entering into a realm
of fantasy. Incidentally, the subject is
a young bride who is preparing for her wedding.
She carries a bouquet and wears a red dress to convey her love. All around her are blues and muted yellows so
that she is the brightest figure in the painting. Perhaps it is taking place at night, or maybe
the artist merely shoves aside the rest of the world as bleak or uninteresting;
the bride is the center of focus. Standing
at a tilted angle, she appears to be receding back into the dreamy, fantasy
world behind her, where a goat is playing an instrument (some kind of small
cello) and other musicians are playing and dancing. An attendant glides across the bride to fix
her veil, and a fish jumps up (perhaps also in dance). A random table, matching the bride's red
dress, appears in the upper right hand corner, just floating in space over the
fish. Behind all of that is a small
church, doubtless where the couple will be wed (but since it appears all the
way in the background that aspect of the ceremony almost seems insignificant or
undesirable). The artist has handpicked
and chosen what gets placed where; the scene comes purely from his inventive
mind, and the colors, from his emotional responses to the subject. In that sense, there's nothing real about
this painting at all.

Chagall, besides carrying on the
Expressionist tradition into the 20th century, built off of earlier
stylistic models from Symbolist artists like Paul Gauguin. Gauguin had sought to make his art about the
untouched paradise of exotic lands and the purity of the native peoples
therein. This movement was donned Primitivism,
for it featured artists' rejection of traditional painting techniques and
realistic renderings for stylized, simplified work like that of native peoples
and children. The Expressionist
symbolism in La Mariée certainly makes reference to Primitivism with its
violin-playing goats and literally flying fish—the stuff of children's fairy
tales.